ter
amazement of Eastern Canadians and to the more profound surprise of the
Americans our handful of Mounted Police, with masterly diplomacy,
endless patience and steady, cool courage were able to handle the whole
situation and solve it without the loss of a single life on either side.
There are few such chapters anywhere in the records of history.

It is in keeping with the general attitude of the Police towards the
Indians, whom they considered the wards of the nation which the men in
the scarlet tunic represented, that we find many fine incidents
scattered up and down throughout the years. At Qu'Appelle, about the
time above noted, an epidemic of smallpox threatened in the winter time,
when its deadly effects are most in evidence in the Indian camps. The
Police never proceeded on the wretched maxim of some that "the only good
Indian is a dead Indian," and so, when these children of the wild were
attacked by plague or pestilence or other destroyer, the Police fought
for the lives of the afflicted people with all the tenacity and the
courage of their corps. On the occasion mentioned in this paragraph
there was no doctor, but Acting Hospital Steward Holmes, who had studied
medicine, though he had no graduation standing, threw himself into the
struggle against this dread disease. He vaccinated the Indians on all
the reserves, many white people and all the half-breeds in the district.
This meant travelling incessantly in the dead of winter and sleeping
without tent in the snow-drifts with the thermometer down to 30 degrees
below zero and more. He was only drawing the usual constable pay of 75
cents a day, and Steele, who was in command, recommended him for a small
bonus allowance and a promotion. For it was not only vaccination and
treatment of smallpox that had engaged Holmes' efforts, but constant
attendance upon hundreds of Indians who had been so worn down that it
was only by his devoted efforts that they were pulled through that hard
winter. To Steele's amazement neither of his recommendations as to this
toiler for others was acted upon. But I do not suppose Holmes cared. He
had done his duty and was not working for reward. But the ways of men
who could pigeon-hole a recommendation like that are difficult to
understand.

A somewhat similar case was away in another direction, where one
Corporal D. B. Smith held the post all alone at the famous old Hudson's
Bay Fort at Norway House on Lake Winnipeg. Scarlet fever and